Permalink vs not question from a newbie

I’m working my way through the WP learning curve and am wondering about permalinks. I think I understand that WP is generating a page number for every page created and can understand why that’s important in communicating outside the site (e.g. sending a link to someone). What I wonder about is whether it’s even useful for links internal to a site where most of the pages are intended to be static (i.e. not blog) to use an alternative.

I’m coming off using Dreamweaver where the links to internal pages use the page name (e.g. https://www.myweb.org/target_page). The nice thing is that if the page name changes (e.g. target_page becomes target_location) DW automatically updates any links. In looking for permalink vs. not-permalink wisdom, ease of maintaining link paths should be considered.

Is there any wisdom regarding when to use permalinks vs. not?

Thanks

Tom